In The Heart Of The Sea

In the winter of 1820, the New England whaling ship Essex was assaulted by something no one could believe: a whale of mammoth size and will, and an almost human sense of vengeance. The real-life maritime disaster would inspire Herman Melville's Moby-Dick. But that told only half the story. This story reveals the encounter's harrowing aftermath, as the ship's surviving crew is pushed to their limits and forced to do the unthinkable to stay alive.

I read the book first and found it a little boring, slow moving, and somewhat technical (I knew nothing about ships) but the movie was much better. Like most books of course, there was a lot more detail -- about the suffering described after they were wrecked, but i found it otherwise similar to the main events in the book's plot. I thought some of the images in this film were beautiful and amazing and that made it better than the book in the way of visualization of these massive whales, the horrendous task of removing spermaceti from the whale brain, and the geographical whereabouts of the shipwrecked victims. Honestly I was expecting a lame movie, but it was great.

I recently borrowed The Whale DVD and just finished In the Heart of the Sea DVD. Both films are about the Essex a whaling ship from Nantucket in the 1820s. They are searching for whales since whale oil is a primary source for light in that day and age. They encounter a huge whale that rams their ship. The ship sinks and the remaining crew drift in the ocean for 90 days in their small whaling boats. Some do eventually make back home to New England. Which DVD was better? The Whale is a British mini-series that goes into more detail about the event. In the Heart of the Sea, a film by Ron Howard, the story includes novelist Herman Melville as a character who speaks with a survivor and gets inspired to write his masterpiece Moby Dick. Both films do a good job portraying the whale hunting (they go out in a big row boats with their harpoons) makes you wonder how many people (and whales) died in the industry. The last scene In the Heart of the Sea has an Essex survivor marveling that someone found oil in the land.

Despite all the visual effects, sudden camera edits trying to create action and phoney glorified music, there's nothing really catchy about this flick. Lots of gory scenes of slaughtering and chopping off whales and the usual Hollywood cliche and on top of that makes killing the whales look exiting and fun. Would be nice if a real Moby Dick existed to mess up with whale hunting fleets.

Quotes

Melville's research on his new book, similar to The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power:
Since it was discovered that whale oil could light our cities in ways never achieved before, it created global demand. It has pushed man to venture further and further into the deep blue unknown. We know not its depths, nor the host of creatures that live there. Monsters. Are they real? Or do the stories exist only to make us respect the sea's dark secrets? The question both vexes and excites me and is the reason I've written you a second time to request a meeting. A conversation with you, sir, I believe will serve me well for the novel I intend to write, currently entitled Moby Dick.
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And the new black oil:
Herman: Incidentally ...I heard a man from Pennsylvania drilled a hole in the ground recently and found oil. That can't be true.
Tom: I heard it, too. Oil from the ground. Fancy that.